Former independent MP Rob Oakeshott tried to convince Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull to become a minister in a Labor-led minority government ''rainbow cabinet'' he envisaged while negotiating with Julia Gillard to back her into the prime ministership.

The revelation is made in Oakeshott's forthcoming memoir, The Independent Member for Lyne, which gives insight into the extraordinary 17-day period after the 2010 election, when a hung parliament meant that Oakeshott, along with fellow independents including Tony Windsor, were left to decide whether Australia would have a Labor or a Coalition government.

Oakeshott recounts that during that period, he had numerous private conversations with Turnbull and raised with him the idea of joining the cabinet of a Gillard-led minority government.

''I tell him I would only consider being a minister in a Labor government if there were others who joined me,'' Oakeshott writes of the current Communications Minister.

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''I am now testing the waters with Malcolm, to see if he wants to be a minister in a Labor government, if he does I would be happy to propose it.''

The conversations were nothing more than ''flirtatious'', Oakeshott says, and Turnbull does not recall the suggestion being made at all.

Oakeshott's memoir also gives a frank account of what it is like to be lobbied by billionaire James Packer. The billionaire took Oakeshott on a tour of his Crown Casino in 2012, when controversial gambling reforms were being discussed by the Gillard government. Oakeshott says Packer schmoozed him with a chilli-laden meal before trying to pressure the MP by letting him know he was ''very close friends'' with senior government members Senator Stephen Conroy and Mark Arbib. The latter left politics and now works for Packer.

Packer told him he would use his network to protect his business and ''hurt the government badly if need be'', according to Oakeshott. This version of events is ''absolutely refuted'' by Packer and his advisor Rowen Craigie, who was also at the meeting.

Oakeshott also criticises independent MP Bob Katter for taking a $250,000 donation to his Katter's Australian Party from Packer at a ''critical moment in the poker machine debate'', and describes his behaviour during the 17-day negotiating period as increasingly erratic, culminating in a meeting in the cabinet room where he launched into a ''lengthy and largely incoherent sermon on ethanol''.